Climatology

Wind Energy Resources in Michigan

As the price of fossil fuels increases, there is increasing interest in wind energy in Michigan and across the Great Lakes region. Three recent wind energy-related projects at MSU have explored the potential for this renewable energy form in Michigan. In the first, historical hourly wind data were collected for the purpose of developing a new, detailed atlas describing wind energy potential across Michigan. In the second, a mesoscale regional climate model (MM5) was evaluated for accuracy in describing wind energy potential across the Great Lakes region at three different spatial resolutions: 36km, 12km, and 4km. The results of the study indicated that a coarser spatial domain resolution was more reliable in describing observed wind direction and velocity. Overall, however, the MM5 was found to contain a number of biases that limit its potential ability to determine potential wind resources in the region.

In the third project, the climate and climate variability of low-level winds over the Great Lakes region of the United States is examined using 30-year (1979-2008) wind records from the recently released North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), a three-dimensional, high spatial and temporal resolution, and dynamically consistent climate dataset. The analyses focus on spatial distribution and seasonal and interannual variability of wind speed at 80 m above the ground, the hub height of the modern, 77-m diameter, 1500 kW wind turbines. The findings from this analysis is reported in the article published recently in Journal of Geophysical Research.

• X. Li, S. Zhong, X. Bian, and W. E. Heilman, 2010: Climate and climate variability of the wind power resources in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115, 1-15. DOI: 10.1029/2009JD013415
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